Defensive Systems
Defensive Systems is a catch-all term for the various devices, programs, and technological marvels employed by starships to ensure their security against all manner of threats. Armour is not included in this list, as it is not considered a system. Shields Shields, AKA Energy Shields, are perhaps the most popular form of defensive system. You'd be hard pressed to find a faction that doesn't use shields in some form on at least a few of their vessels. Shields come in many different forms, but the most common traits of a shield are as follows: Most shields are projected energy field that create an almost skin-tight seal around a spaceship, blue in hue, functioning as a first line of defense. The shield forms a solid barrier against which the attacks of an enemy collide, causing no harm to your vessel. A shield is normally only visible for a moment in the area in which it has been struck. Shields do have their drawbacks, however. For starters, shields require quite a bit of power to operate. Like any structure, a shield can only handle so much damage before it collapses. Particularly powerful weapons can knock out a shield with a single shot. Such weapons are rare, however. Finally, slower-moving and solid objects, such as shuttles, fighters, torpedoes, asteroids, and even other ships, completely ignore shields. Fortunately, even if they are brought down, shields can and almost always are recharging, even mid-battle. And if you really really need them to stay up, you can always divert power into them from other systems. Not all shields fit that mold. For instance, Razorbird shields are purple-hued bubbles around their ships that function even despite conventional interference. Terran shields are sectored, allowing power to be transferred to at-risk areas of the ship and even tune different shield sections of a single ship to have different shield harmonics. Charged Plating Charged plating is an uncommon form of shield system used by only one Milky Way faction today. Whereas normal shields operate like a field of energy through which an enemy must get before they can threaten your armour and hull, charged plating instead channels that power through a vessel's armour, causing it to glow softly. This increases the toughness of the armour. Charged plating has two settings. Passive, which is on whenever the rest of the starship is on, which simply improves the effectiveness of your armour, and active. Active mode can be switched on for a period of time, usually when heavy combat is initiated. This causes the charged plating to glow more brightly and allows it to redirect the energy of a hit to less important areas. It is commonly accepted that the active version is more effective, on average, than standard shields, while the passive version is less effective. The only known faction which uses this technology is the Mindnet in the form of their plasma armour. This is derived from the neutron armour used by the Metaforms (note that this system had nothing to do with the metal dubbed neutronium by the Murrcioun). Category:Pan-Faction Technologies